


Lean Against The Wind

by LadyShadowphyre



Series: Lean Against The Wind [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: And How Miscommunication Can Happen Even When You Write Down Every Word, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ascended Background OCs, But he makes his presence known anyway, Dean Winchester is Sir Not Appearing In This Story, Dr Raphael Lehrer Is A Caring Psychologist, Emotional Rollercoaster, Eventual Happy Ending, Flashburn to Slowburn, Human Raphael, In Which We Explore The Importance Of Communication, Jimmy Novak In Leather On A Motorcycle, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Motorcycles, Original Character Drama, Sam Winchester is a good friend, The Author Likes Fountain Pens, can be read as standalone, off-screen motorcycle accident, recurrent nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:27:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22467856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyShadowphyre/pseuds/LadyShadowphyre
Summary: Reluctant drifter Sam Winchester fell fast and hard for Jimmy Novak, the motorcycle-riding bad boy of Normal, Illinois, with a heart of gold. Telling Jimmy that his Dad was moving them again and it was over was the second hardest thing Sam had to do, the hardest being leaving Normal behind the very next day, not knowing whether Jimmy was even alive. Haunted by visions of Jimmy going up in flames, even though Sam never saw the accident in person, the Stanford Honors student and burgeoning novelist starts writing letters to Jimmy's ghost and sending them to his last known address. It's a brand new chapter when Jimmy writes him back.
Relationships: Jimmy Novak/Sam Winchester
Series: Lean Against The Wind [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1616506
Comments: 18
Kudos: 21





	Lean Against The Wind

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Sam Winchester Big Bang 2019-2020!  
> Also written for:  
> Sam Winchester Bingo square: Writer!Sam  
> SPN Fluff Bingo square: Free Space - Pen Pals  
> SPN Song Challenge Bingo square: "Wish You Were Here" by Incubus  
> Good Things Happen Bingo square: Childhood Friends  
> Raphael Bingo square: Stanford Era
> 
> Awesome artwork created by the fantastic emmatheslayer!

**I** T NEVER BEGAN the same way. Sometimes the dream started with Sam riding on the back of Jimmy Novak's motorcycle, arms wrapped tight around his waist and chest pressed against the worn and warm leather jacket with Jimmy's helmet on Sam's head because the older boy refused to take risks with Sam's safety even when he neglected his own. Sometimes it played out from the last time Sam saw Jimmy, straddling his motorcycle and watching Sam with those incredible blue eyes while Sam stood on the curb and ripped his heart out around the lump in his own throat. Sometimes it was completely incomprehensible, Jimmy suddenly appearing out of nowhere in a totally unrelated scene where he had never been, reaching out to Sam and calling his name before bursting into flames. That was how the dreams always ended, whether Sam was flung free of the motorcycle, or trapped beneath it in the wreck with Jimmy, or rooted to the curb as a helpless spectator watching the shadowy, undefined truck come out of nowhere and send Jimmy's motorcycle spinning off the road to be engulfed in flames with Sam's name echoing in Jimmy's voice.

A year and a half later, the dreams were still causing Sam to wake in a cold sweat, sometimes with tears streaking his face, and always with Jimmy's name on his lips. A year and a half later and he was still wearing Jimmy's class ring on the silver chain around his neck. The fact that his dad and brother would have told him to salt and burn the ring to "lay Jimmy's spirit to rest" was what kept Sam wearing it, partly out of a desire to keep the last piece of Jimmy he had left safe and close, and partly out of spite for his father's paranoia that had resulted in Sam being forced to break things off with Jimmy and led to Jimmy driving home hurt and distracted enough to get in the wreck in the first place.

That much he had been over with Stanford's campus psychologist, Dr Raphael Lehrer, during their weekly meetings. Dr Lehrer had helped Sam to come to terms with the fact that, not having been at the scene of the accident, he could not logically have any idea what had happened to cause the accident, and that not having heard the entire news story he also had no way of knowing how bad the accident had been. His dreams were an internal projection of his fears and the guilt he felt over the break-up, not a reflection of reality. Logically, Sam didn't even know for sure that Jimmy was even dead but, Dr Lehrer explained with wry sympathy, logic had very little to do with the subconscious mind.

Dr Lehrer had been the one to encourage him to start writing again, pouring out all the horror and pain of his childhood into "fiction" stories the way he'd once done for his old English teacher. It helped a lot to vent his frustrations with the way he and Dean had been raised as child soldiers in a never-ending war against the supernatural darkness of the world, and his frustrations over his father's inability to see the shades of gray, the nuances, the parts of the supernatural that weren't inherently bad just because they weren't completely human. Dr Lehrer had therefore been the one Sam had asked for help when just writing things down hadn't felt like enough and he'd begun refining the stories until they were in a cohesive state where he thought he might actually be able to get them published, get the "real story" about hunting and the supernatural out there in a way that could be passed off as fictional by everyone who hadn't run up against the supernatural themselves.

It had been a nerve-wracking conversation, even with how Dr Lehrer had taken some of the things Sam had let slip gently in stride. When he'd let slip about Jimmy's ring, Dr Lehrer had looked thoughtful and then asked Sam if the ring felt more like a weight or a comfort. Sam had admitted that it was more of a comfort, the weight of it reassuring rather than restrictive.

"Then I think we can rule out a malevolent spirit or ghost tied to the ring," Dr Lehrer had told him, smiling faintly when Sam had outright gaped at the man. "But I suppose you could try sleeping with the ring inside a circle of salt on the floor or your desk for a night and see if that changes anything."

"....Christo."

"Bless you."

Dr Lehrer, it turned out, was very much aware of the supernatural, which was a significant part of why he encouraged Sam in his writing efforts and ambition to publish the stories as books, agreeing that getting an oblique but factual "how to cope with the supernatural" manual onto the shelves for the masses could only be a good thing in the long run. With that secret out in the open, Sam found himself becoming much more open about the events of his childhood, his relationship with Jimmy, and the threat to Jimmy's safety having been the final tipping point that made him break things off to leave town with his Dad and brother.

"It was supposed to keep him safe," he had told the carpet of Dr Lehrer's office. "He was supposed to be safe... but what if breaking up with him caused the accident? What if, by trying to keep him safe, I ended up killing him?"

"No, Sam, you didn't. Whatever happened that night, even _if_ Jimmy is dead, _you_ did not kill him. You are _not_ responsible for the accident. For that matter, do you even know for sure that he _is_ dead?"

"No... that's the crazy thing. I didn't hear enough of the news story to know, and I haven't been able to bring myself to look for his obituary. I don't _know_ that he's dead, but I see him dying in my dreams every night."

"Hm," Dr Lehrer frowned and tilted his head to one side, looking off into the middle distance the way he sometimes did when thinking, then said, "Well, writing has been very helpful to you so far for everything else. Why don't you write him a letter? You have his last known address, and it hasn't been too long for the post office not to still be forwarding his mail if that's changed. The worst that can happen is you get the letter back unopened because your fears proved true, but that's not the only inevitable result, and then you'll know one way or another."

Sam couldn't find any logical objection to this, even as his heart clenched at the thought of getting confirmation of Jimmy's death. Dr Lehrer was right that it was worth a try, however, and so Sam sat down at his desk, one hand holding the ring and his other hand holding a pencil as he stared down the blank lines of the college ruled notebook before him. The ring was warm from his body heat and, after a long moment, Sam pressed the tip of the pencil to the paper and began.

_Dear Jimmy,_

_I don't even know if you'll get this. Honestly, I don't even know if you're alive to get this. Dad packed us into the car to leave town bright and early the morning after I said goodbye and we were already past the city limits when the radio switched over to the report of the accident. They didn't use your name, and I only heard part of the report before Dad realized what was happening and changed the station, but I recognized the description of your motorcycle._

_I'm so sorry, Jimmy. I didn't want to leave you, but I thought leaving with Dad and Dean would keep you safe. Dad barely even let me meet you to say goodbye, kept saying I was putting you in danger by getting so close in the first place, and then the same night you got in that wreck. My therapist says it's not my fault, that I didn't cause the accident and so I'm not responsible for it happening, but I still see it in my dreams every night since and we've ruled out me being haunted by you in the literal sense._

_Is it selfish of me to hope that you'll forgive me for leaving? I couldn't really grasp the reality of the situation at the time, not until the last school I ended up with sat me down with the guidance counselor to talk about the future, but I know now that I didn't have to leave with Dad because I was eighteen already. It feels a little like too little too late, but I did get away from Dad. I'm at Stanford now, on a full ride scholarship. Guess you weren't the only one who thought I was smart enough to make it, even if I don't really feel that smart._

_I'm sorry_

Sam stopped and scribbled that out. He'd already apologized once in the letter and he didn't need to go on and on about it like a broken record, no matter how much he might feel like he could never apologize enough.

 ~~ _I'm sorry_~~ _I still love you_

Again, Sam scribbled through the text, this time scowling at the paper. Way to push his feelings at someone who might not even want to ever see him again, if he was still alive to read this! The thought made him grip the ring more tightly and he had to take a deep breath and let it out slowly before he could make his hands stop shaking enough to try and write again.

 ~~ _I'm sorry_ _I still love you_~~ _I hope this letter finds you safe, and that you'll be willing to write me back to let me know you're at least still alive if you are, but I won't blame you at all if you'd prefer not to keep in contact after that. If my therapist is right, and he's been pretty on the nose so far, then just knowing one way or the other should help._

Sam paused there, staring at the letter for a long moment, then signed off with "Sincerely, Sam" and dropped the pencil to the desk. It was tempting to rip the letter out and recopy it over in pen without the scribbles, but he made himself fold it up and put it into the envelope sitting by his phone as it was. A dead man wouldn't care about scribbles, and if Jimmy _was_ alive, well, he'd put up with Sam's brand of awkward for two months before that night. He could handle a little more.

Leaving the letter addressed and stamped on the desk, Sam got up and stretched, then checked the clock and winced. He'd been at this for a lot longer than he'd realized. Much as he might want to get in some studying, he had class in the morning and knew that he should probably change into his pajamas and get some sleep. Studying - and mailing the letter - could wait for tomorrow.

And he refused to feel ashamed or guilty for gingerly placing the ring and its chain inside a small circle of salt on his desk before turning out the lights.

**T** HE RING WAS out of the circle of salt before morning, nightmares even more horrific than usual waking Sam in a cold sweat. With the chain back around his neck and the ring clutched in his left hand, he fell back to sleep almost immediately and nearly slept through his alarm. Staring at the bags under his eyes in the mirror, Sam vowed silently to himself that the ring wasn't coming off again unless Jimmy himself demanded it back. He also made a mental note to talk to Dr Lehrer about the experiment and the results. One data point wasn't exactly a proper scientific experiment, but it did present the theory that the ring was somehow holding the nightmares at bay rather than causing them. Sam had looked the ring over very thoroughly, and there were no unusual symbols or sigils in the metal or under the cheap blue glass "stone", just the name of the high school Jimmy (and Sam, for those two months) had attended around the edge, the year Jimmy had graduated on one side, and "Novak" on the other. It was, to all appearances, a perfectly ordinary class ring.

The letter was put into the mailbox on his way to class. He didn't precisely forget about the letter, but he did make himself focus on his classes and studying with even more intent than usual. Between studying, picking up a part time job at the campus library, and preparing the packets of his first book for sending out en masse to potential publishers, he didn't really have time to dwell on the letter that may or may not receive an answer.

It came as something of a surprise, therefore, when he went by the campus post office on his way to his appointment with Dr Lehrer as usual and there was a letter waiting for him. For one painfully heart-stopping moment, he thought it was his own letter, ignominiously returned to sender as he had feared. With trembling fingers, he fumbled the unusually thick letter out of the narrow mailbox, nearly dropping it before he could get a look at the front. He nearly dropped it again when he saw his name and post office box at Stanford printed neatly on the front in Jimmy's crisp, precise handwriting that had always seemed far more in keeping with the recent graduate from Notre Dame than the leather-clad motorcyclist.

Sam couldn't say how his feet managed to carry him the rest of the way to Dr Lehrer's office, but the man took one look at his face and gently guided him in to sit on the couch while he brought him some water. He sat beside Sam on the couch just outside of the normal bubble of personal space and waited while Sam drained the glass in several gulps. When he held out a hand, Sam put the glass into it more on automatic reflex than conscious decision, and barely blinked as the glass was set down on the coffee table in front of them with a thump.

"I got a letter back," Sam finally said when the silence continued to stretch between them and Dr Lehrer seemed in no hurry to break it.

"Is that good or bad?" Dr Lehrer asked, matching Sam's quiet tone. Sam lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug, glancing down towards the letter before diverting his gaze quickly to the carpet.

"It's Jimmy's handwriting on the envelope," he said and then stopped, swallowing hard. "It's his handwriting. That means he's still alive, right? And that's... that's obviously good...."

"It _is_ good," Dr Lehrer agreed. "Jimmy's alive. He did not die in the accident. Your dreams of his death are just dreams."

"Just dreams," Sam repeated, wincing at the edge of hysteria he could hear lurking under the edges of his voice. "Horrible, vivid dreams that got worse when I tried leaving the ring off while I slept!"

"Worse?"

"He wasn't, uh, wasn't calling for me anymore. Just screaming as he burned."

"Well, then," Dr Lehrer looked over at his desk before shaking himself a little and returning his gaze to Sam with a wry look. "I think we can safely eliminate that as an experiment to be repeated."

"Not very scientific," Sam joked around the wave of relief and swept over him.

"Maybe not, if this had anything to do with science," Dr Lehrer conceded. "But this is about helping you, and leaving off the ring very clearly did not help you. You're wearing it now?"

Sam glanced down to realize that his hand had crept up to rest over the ring where it was hidden under his shirt, and he felt his face heat. "Yeah."

"Good," Dr Lehrer said firmly. And Sam's surprise, he explained, "Whether it's supernatural or psychosomatic, it obviously helps you to have it. That's a _good_ thing."

"I'm scared it will stop helping if I open the letter and find out Jimmy wants nothing to do with me," Sam admitted around the tightness in his chest and throat.

"I wouldn't normally say this to the students who come to my office, but I think you'll understand it better than they would," Dr Lehrer said, his voice soft and his eyes kind. "Fear is natural and to be expected. It tells us we're alive. Looking our fear in the eye and refusing to let it rule us is what makes us human."

"You can't move forward if you let fear hold you back," Sam murmured, and caught the flash of Dr Lehrer's rare grin. "Are you going to say 'I told you so' if it turns out he wants to keep in contact?"

"I would never," Dr Lehrer protested, though there was still the edge of a smirk that made Sam laugh. "Go on. I can step out if you'd like some privacy."

"You don't mind?" Sam asked, unaccountably shy at the offer despite how much he appreciated it. Somehow the prospect of reading this letter in front of his therapist was more daunting than letting the man help him pick apart his brain once a week.

"Not at all," Dr Lehrer assured him, standing up from the couch. He picked up the glass from the coffee table, refilled it from the dispenser behind his desk, and brought it back to set on the coffee table again. "I'll go sit at Rebecca's desk and watch cat videos with her. I'll check back in... twenty minutes?"

"Okay," Sam nodded, watching Dr Lehrer leave the office and close the door before looking down at the glass of water. He didn't know what he'd done to get so lucky to have this man for his therapist, but it must have been some kind of miracle and he was incredibly grateful for it. His Dad had always scoffed at the idea of angels existing, even despite there being twice as much lore on angels as there was on just about anything else out there, but Sam couldn't believe that so much supernatural evil could exist in the world without the existence of some equally powerful supernatural force of good to balance it out, and angels were as good as anything to believe in. Dr Lehrer might not be the actual Archangel Raphael, Healer of Heaven, but he was definitely a force of good... and probably not entirely human, if Sam was being completely candid with himself.

...And he was stalling.

His eye caught on the elegant scrawl of almost purple blue ink on the envelope, feeling that same gutpunch of familiarity. Jimmy had showed him the engraved fountain pen with his full name and Notre Dame University's logo on the barrel that had been his parents' graduation gift to them. He had joked that he would probably get more use out of the pen than he would get from his Sociology degree. Sam wondered if that was still true, seeing the pen had definitely been in use at least once now, while a degree in human interaction and societal structure would not be very helpful to someone recovering from a motorcycle accident... right? Sam was still trying to figure out his own scholastic path now that he was becoming a writer, and getting a degree in creative writing felt a little too much like cheating.

And he was still stalling.

Taking a deep breath, he made himself turn the letter over and slide his finger into the gap between the paper where the adhesive didn't quite go all the way to the edge, gingerly pulling the paper apart, each tiny rip sounding unreasonably loud in the quiet office. He nearly stopped and ran to the door to call Dr Lehrer back in so that the silence wouldn't be so oppressive and ominous, but.... no. He needed to do this himself. He owed Jimmy the courtesy of not airing whatever he might have to say to Sam to someone else right off the bat, even though he knew there was no way he wouldn't be talking to his therapist about the contents at least a little.

The envelope opened, and Sam choked on a small laugh at the sight of the fountain pen's fancy ink scrawled across college ruled notebook paper, the same as what Sam had used to write to Jimmy. That was very him, using a fancy pen from a fancy school on plain notebook paper. It made Sam feel a little better about pulling the letter out of the envelope. The thickness of the folded paper and the dense layers of ink he could see through the pages made his eyebrows climb towards his hairline even as his heartbeat quickened. Not a brief "I'm alive, don't contact me again" note after all. Sam swallowed and flipped the packet of papers over, unfolding them to get to the first page.

A pen fell out of the papers. Sam stared at it, not sure how to react to this. A letter, he'd expected. Even a letter that was clearly longer than the one he'd written to Jimmy wasn't that unusual. A pen? That was odd. Cautiously, Sam picked it up, noting the similarity between the pen and Jimmy's fountain pen, and then felt his third gut-punch of the day hit him with enough force to nearly make him fall over.

 _Sam Winchester_ _  
_ _Stanford University_

Sam couldn't move. He almost couldn't breathe. This... This was.... _How_ , even?! Sam had written the letter a week ago, but that wasn't enough time for the letter to get there, Jimmy to read it, see that Sam was attending Stanford, special order an incredibly expensive pen, and send it back to him. This was.... _What??_

Confused and more than a little alarmed, Sam turned to the letter in hopes for an explanation to this puzzle, because he really wanted an explanation right now!

 _Dear Sam_ ,

_It feels weird to start a letter like this. We're taught the format and formula as kids so it feels almost rote and impersonal to begin this with "Dear Sam" even when you are dear to me, but "Darling Sam" makes it sound like I'm talking to a girl and "Beloved" is probably really presumptuous of me considering you scribbled it out._

There was a spot of ink on the paper as if Jimmy had rested the pen there for a moment while he thought, and Sam bit his lip to keep himself from... laughing or crying, he wasn't sure which urge felt stronger right now. Jimmy still loved him. Jimmy _still loved him!_ Or was it his turn to read too much into things? He forced himself to rip his eyes away from that _"Beloved"_ and move on past the blot to where the letter picked up again.

 _I was_ (a scribble that looked like it might have started to be "thrilled") _surprised to get your letter, and even more surprised when I read it. I guess me writing back is probably proof enough, but I'm alive, I promise, and you are most definitely not to blame for me crashing. I don't actually remember the accident, but the police report said it was caused by some dick in a semi skidding and running me off the road into a ditch. The crash threw me off the bike and into a barbed wire fence, so most of my injuries were from that. Head trauma even with the helmet (see why I always insisted you be the one wearing it until I could get a second one?) and a broken arm and broken ribs, some internal bleeding and one of the ribs punctured my lung, but otherwise mostly just scrapes and bruises. Bad news: my jacket was toast._

Sam winced. "Head trauma" was kind of vague, and could mean anything from a concussion to he'd been in a coma. Concussions alone were no laughing matter, as he knew from experience, and he breathed a sigh of relief to know Jimmy's helmet had done its job keeping his head from splitting open on impact. Some of the constriction in his chest was easing, too, because while the injury list was a veritable cocktail of pain and a lengthy recovery period, none of it involved fire or explosions. His dreams really were just dreams. It would probably take a while to really sink in, and his subconscious might not get the message for a while, but he could now look at this letter and remind himself that they were wrong. He felt a twinge of sadness about the leather jacket being ruined, and trust Jimmy to remember how much Sam had enjoyed "stealing" it to snuggle into the warmed leather that smelled like his boyfriend. He wondered how much it would cost to buy Jimmy a replacement.

_I have a new one now, red instead of black._

Okay, maybe a replacement wouldn't be needed. Sam wondered a little at the color change, but maybe Jimmy had gotten the new one from a thrift store and that's what they had.

_Mom disapproves, of course, but didn't fight me when I pointed out that the black one had given its inanimate life protecting me. She's also not thrilled that I'm spending so much time in the garage fixing the bike now that my arm's healed. I think she's convinced herself that I'm going to get back on the bike and drive myself off a cliff or something. The wreck really shook her up, but since I'm an adult she can't exactly forbid me from getting back on it. She doesn't get it, but then she never understood why I love the bike so much in the first place._

Sam remembered. He'd overheard at least five different carefully veiled arguments about the motorcycle when he'd been with Jimmy around his parents, at least one of which had involved Sam himself and Jimmy's mother expressing passive aggressive "concern" over Sam's safety riding behind Jimmy all the time. Sam had never had to explain to Dean why he loved riding with Jimmy, at least when it came to the motorcycle, and the only time he'd talked to his Dad about Jimmy was when John was telling them they were leaving and Sam didn't want to go.

Would it have made a difference if he had told his Dad he had a boyfriend before that night? Or would John have just demanded he break it off all the sooner, reiterating his demand that his sons form no outside attachments, leaving Sam having to avoid Jimmy for however long they'd remained in town, hurting and angry and possibly even--

Sam closed his eyes and took a deep breath, held it for the count of five, and then forced himself to let it out slowly. It would do him no good to follow that train of thought down the spiral of what ifs and bad options, and he knew it. He still had a lot of letter to go through, and getting lost in speculation of things that would never happen was a sure way to run out of time to do it in the safety and solitude of Dr Lehrer's office.

 _Something tells me you get it more than she ever will, and not just because of how I never had to explain myself to you. You just seemed to_ _know_ _, without me saying a word. I used to wonder if maybe you needed the escape just as much as I did. I guess that was true, just not quite how I thought at the time. We never really talked about it because we didn't_ _need_ _to, and then_ (another scribble, this one much more vigorous to the point that Sam couldn't tell which words might have been there) _we didn't have any more time together._

_If I had asked to come with you that night, would you have let me?_

Sam felt his heart stop. He had to reread the sentence twice more before his brain could make sense of it, and he could still feel it battering at his composure. Jimmy had wanted to... come with him? Just... just _leave_ his family behind and ride off behind the Impala wherever John was taking them this time, just because Sam might have let him? It had never even occurred to Sam to ask Jimmy to come with them; John had said "end things" and with John Winchester there were orders obeyed or punishment for disobedience, no alternatives or compromises. Would his Dad have let Jimmy come with them?

Would Sam have wanted that, to pull Jimmy into the hunt? His Dad had used the argument of Jimmy's safety to make Sam agree to leave, but if Jimmy had wanted to come... if he had known what he was asking....

_You can answer that when you write me back. And please do write me back. If I haven't made it clear by now that I want to stay in contact with you, then I don't know how else to say it. Write me back. Call me. Or.... I got the messages you left, and I'm so sorry I worried you. I tried to call back, but your number was no longer in service. I tried calling Dean and his number had changed too. I really didn't know what to think about that and I still don't, because yeah, you told me your Dad is paranoid, but that seems pretty extreme. If Dean hadn't showed up this past May out of the blue I would have been the one wondering if you were still alive._

....Dean did _WHAT?!_

Sam stared at the paper, caught between incredulity and rage that he wasn't sure he could articulate the source of. Dean, his brother, the one he'd least wanted to leave behind even to get away from John Winchester's iron fist and get the education he wanted and deserved to have, had, what, snuck away from their Dad and gone back to Normal a year after they'd left? To see Jimmy? But he couldn't be bothered to swing by Stanford, too, and see Sam? The explanation for this had to be in the letter, so Sam wrestled his ire down and kept reading.

_Dean asked me not to say anything to anyone about him showing up. I get the feeling he was going behind your Dad's back to do it, and it wasn't until I got your letter that I realized he might have been going behind your back, too, especially since he showed up right after your birthday. He claimed he was there to make sure I was alive, said some things about you and how you were handling our separation that I'm not sure I believed, and then told me you'd gotten into Stanford. Full ride scholarship? Way to go, Sam! I hope you don't mind me being presumptuous and giving you a "congrats on the scholarship" pen to match my "congrats on not dropping out before graduation" pen. Use it to write me back?_

There was a tiny doodle of a floppy-eared dog's face with big eyes and overflowing tears in the margin next to the paragraph. Sam choked on a laugh. Was Jimmy really trying to give him puppy eyes through a letter? God, he loved that man!

_I'm going to try and end the letter now before I spend another two or three pages just writing "please write back" over and over._

Sam snickered, reaching up to wipe his stinging eyes with the back of his hand and flinching when his face felt wet. There was another doodle of a dog with its tongue hanging out and lines around the tail to indicate it wagging, followed by an address that was different from the one Sam had sent the letter to, though still in Normal, and Sam frowned at it for a moment.

 _The address is for the Extended Stay America I'm living in now that I'm healed up and don't need my parents looking over my shoulder. I don't_ _think_ _Mom or Dad would stoop to opening my mail, but better to have it just come directly to me, and that's where I am until I figure out where I'm going for grad school. I was going to go back to Notre Dame, but recent events have me reconsidering my options._

_And I can already tell you want to know what I mean by that. You'll just have to write back and ask._

There was another puppy face doodle, this time with the dog winking in a way no real dog did. Sam snorted, smiling fondly at the doodle and imagining Jimmy's face with that mischievous expression he always got whenever he was teasing Sam, never maliciously, just poking at Sam's drive to learn and know and understand. Fine, Jimmy wanted him to write back so much? He'd send Jimmy a letter every day for a week and see how the man liked that!

There was another scribble, then a blot on the page, and then, _"Most Sincerely Yours, Jimmy"_ finished off the last page of the letter. Sam slumped back onto the couch, feeling worn out and pulled through the wringer, but so much lighter than he had in what felt like ages.

Fact: Jimmy was alive. There was no other way to interpret the fact that he was holding a letter in Jimmy's handwriting with so many personally significant details included.

Speculation: Jimmy didn't blame Sam for his accident. He had come right out and said that Sam was not responsible for him crashing, which wasn't exactly the same as saying he didn't blame him, but it was close enough. Sam had even rambled about not blaming Jimmy if he didn't want to hear from him again and Jimmy had very thoroughly disputed that point several times over.

Fact: Jimmy definitely wanted to keep in contact with him. Again, no other way to interpret the repeated pleas for Sam to write him back to the point of using puppy doodles and giving him a specific address for where to send the letters. Sam mentally shied away from the thought of calling, still flinching over the increasingly incoherent voicemails he'd left Jimmy after hearing about the accident, voicemails he now knew Jimmy had gotten only after the next round of Winchester Phone Roulette had ensured he couldn't return them. No, calling would have to wait, but letters... he could do letters.

Speculation: Jimmy was still as in love with Sam as Sam was with him. The evidence was pretty clearly laid out, but Sam wasn't going to declare it absolute fact until Jimmy said it. Which probably meant Sam was going to need to say it first and that was somehow still terrifying even knowing how he felt and being fairly sure of how Jimmy felt in return.

Fact: Jimmy had known from Dean that Sam was at Stanford early enough to have ordered an expensive pen as a gift to Sam and have it arrive in time to send in his letter.

That was a landmine full of possible speculations that Sam wasn't sure he was ready to touch just yet, most of them centering around Dean. Sam knew he would probably have to confront that elephant eventually, but he was definitely not ready to do that right now. He was barely processing facts one and two as it was, and that was more than enough for the day!

There was a soft knock on the office door, and then the door opened and Dr Lehrer poked his head through the opening. "Sam? Everything okay?"

Okay? Sam wasn't sure if he was going to be okay ever again. He rolled his head along the back of the couch and looked up at Dr Lehrer with what had to be the most bewildering goofy smile in existence and said, "He sent me a pen."

**S** AM WOULD NEVER be able to articulate later just how grateful he was that Dr Lehrer did not laugh in his face, but the man was wonderfully professional in handling the rest of Sam's tearful, hysterical, happy breakdown. The rest of the appointment was spent looking at the cat videos Dr Lehrer had watched with Rebecca, which had settled Sam down enough to face leaving the office with something approaching his usual equilibrium, the letter tucked safely into the middle of his bag between two textbooks, and the pen tucked up in his hand. Sam refused to let go of that pen until he had gotten back to his dorm and sat down at his desk, and even then it was to set the pen on the desk next to his notebook.

A letter a day was a funny prospect, but now that he was thinking about the logistics of it he was second guessing himself. What would he even write about? What if he wrote too much in the first letter and didn't have anything left to talk about in the others? What if he wrote too little, meaning to save some things to ask in the later letters, but forgot about them when it came time to write those letters?

Sam groaned and spun the chair away from the desk, leaning back until the back of his head could touch down on the blank page as if he could somehow empty his head onto it via osmosis and have it come out in some semblance of coherency. There was a formula for this, he knew. Stressing about it wouldn't help any, even if everything in him rebelled against treating this like any other assignment or hunt. It was too important.

Jimmy was too important.

"Pull it together, Winchester," Sam muttered to himself, sitting up and turning back towards his desk. "It's more important than school, but school tricks still work. Use them."

First, he needed to make a list. Firmly telling the little voice in his head scoffing at him like Dean would to shut up, he tore out a sheet of notebook paper and grabbed a pencil. At the top of the list, he wrote a note to himself to practice with the fountain pen on scrap paper before he started Jimmy's next letter. Fountain pens were not the same as cheap hotel room ballpoints, and he'd probably need to practice at least a little. He'd also probably need to figure out how to take it apart and reassemble it, and where to buy ink for it since a fountain pen wasn't something you just threw away after it ran out. Especially not when your boyfriend got it engraved for you.

Sam paused, staring at the pen, and bit his lower lip. Jimmy had been his boyfriend, but they'd broken up when Sam left, even if neither of them was referring to it as a breakup. Sam pulled out Jimmy's letter and scanned it just to be sure and no, there was only a mention of their separation. It was probably too presumptuous of him to think of Jimmy as his boyfriend still, but trying to think of him as his ex sent a stab of pain through his chest that had Sam clutching at the ring around his neck. That was... objectively not healthy, but was still an understandable reaction under the circumstances. Sam could almost hear Dr Lehrer patiently telling him that it was okay to hold onto thoughts that gave him comfort and let go of the ones that didn't. Still, that was also probably something he needed to talk to Jimmy about, especially now that they were back in contact while still separated by distance like this.

So. First item on the list of topics to cover would be the status of their relationship. He added a star by that one, because that was going to be a somewhat fraught letter to get through so he probably shouldn't write it on one of his heavy days. Definitely not on Wednesday when he had Introduction to Philosophy with Professor Adler. The man was a competent lecturer but he always left Sam feeling like spitting nails with the way he talked about human nature, like he was one of those people who'd read _Lord of the Flies_ and assumed the psychology behind it applied to humanity across the board. With that in mind, he penciled in "Wednesday: talk about book series", because that was something Sam was genuinely happy about and would help counter the awful feelings Adler's class left him with.

Next on the list was Jimmy's comment about reconsidering his options regarding grad school. The older man hadn't been wrong about that piquing Sam's curiosity, not the least of which because after this long Jimmy should have already been _in_ grad school - longer deferral because of the accident and his recovery? - but Sam was absolutely not going to give in and ask about it right off the bat in the very next letter. That could wait for the second or third letter. If Jimmy was going to tease him, Sam could tease him right back, and with the distance between them Sam would be able to avoid his inevitable fluster getting in the way of a properly teasing rebuttal.

Taking a deep breath, Sam wrote down "accident", "motorcycle", and "jacket", then added a note to cover those in the first letter. Under that he wrote "therapy" and "Dr Lehrer", because whatever Dean must have told Jimmy probably wasn't good, and the truth wasn't exactly better but at least it wouldn't be Jimmy's mind making up scenarios the way Sam's had for months. Under that he wrote "Dean" because seriously, what the hell was his brother doing? He was still pissed that Dean had gone back to Normal without telling him and told Jimmy not to tell anyone he'd been there, but he could acknowledge that Dean would have to actually be in contact with him to tell him, and if their Dad was keeping him on too short a leash to go out to California... but then how did he get to Normal?

That was probably not something he could expect an answer to from Jimmy, so Sam tucked that into the back of his mind to stew over until he could talk to Dean, if it ever happened, and moved on to the next item on the list. Hand shaking, Sam wrote down "Hunting" and underlined it twice, followed by a careful transcription of Jimmy's exact question in quotation marks. That was another minefield, but probably one that needed to be addressed before he talked about his book series since that was essentially a carefully fictionalized autobiography, and while the events in the earlier books would be unfamiliar to Jimmy, the later books would have mentions of events that Sam had told Jimmy about, heavily edited for hunting content. He wrote "Tuesday??" beside that line, and then sat back and stared at the ceiling.

Was he forgetting anything? He didn't think so, but it probably wouldn't hurt to reread the letter again just in case he'd missed something. With that flimsy excuse held firmly in mind, Sam pulled the letter to him and began to read again, pausing to make a couple more notes beside certain topics, including a note of "explain Winchester Apocalypse" next to Dean's name because without the context... Well, even with the context of the fight and Sam's desire to get away and John saying "if you walk out that door don't plan on coming back" the radio silence looked bad. And even if it didn't need to look good, Sam had no way of knowing just how much Dean might have told Jimmy.

Then, because he couldn't help himself, he went back and reread the letter again.

By the time he had finished his sixth re-read of the letter, it was well past time he should be in bed, and he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. He stumbled into bed, staring at the letter in the moonlight coming through his window until the words began to blur beyond recognition, and then carefully folded the letter and tucked it under his pillow. He fell asleep with his fingertips brushing the paper and the ring wrapped tight in his hand.

**F** RIDAY WAS NOT Sam's favorite day of the week, unlike most of his classmates. Friday was probably his lightest day of classes, true, but he made up for that with starting his work schedule that day, having shifts Friday afternoon, Saturday morning, and Sunday afternoon. The library, at least, was not as noisy a place to work as the campus coffee shop or bookstore might have been, but it was more dangerous with frantic, desperate students trying to find books and sources they suddenly needed at the last minute. Sam was actually more afraid of being strangled by a wild-eyed student for having to tell them that the only copy of that book was checked out right now than he would have been facing down a ravenous werewolf on a full moon. It wasn't exactly good for his nerves, but then hunting had given his nerves a lot of room before they got rattled. _Thanks, Dad._

Friday was also the day after his regularly scheduled appointment with Dr Lehrer, which meant that anything that happened on Friday to shake him up or send him into a panic attack had to either wait a week or prompt a call to Rebecca to ask if Dr Lehrer had an opening, and he hated to do that. The psychologist had managed to impress upon him that if he needed the help then there was no shame in asking, even outside the normal schedule, but he always felt as if asking to take up one of those open slots was somehow taking it away from someone else who might need it more than he did. So far it had only happened twice, but it was still unnerving every time.

Looming over him now was also the need to start writing a letter a day to Jimmy. He'd been too tired the night before to start writing, or even to reorganize the list into a more coherent outline for the coming week. Now it hung in the back of his mind, a combined threat and reward for completing the day, and Sam was a nervous wreck by the time he finally got off shift at the library, grabbed something portable to eat from the campus dining hall, and made it back to his dorm room.

His roommate was there.

It shouldn't have been a surprise. Sam knew he had a roommate, had met Daniel Aguirre the same day he'd moved in. He'd also met Daniel's boyfriend, Tom Turner, and been informed that Daniel was hoping to pretty much live with Tom in his off-campus apartment. Daniel was still a Freshman, though, so he technically still had to be in the dorms. To that end, Sam usually kept bedding on both beds despite only sleeping in one, and texted Daniel warnings about the RAs coming around so that his nominal roommate could stop in and present a nominal presence to keep up appearances, but for all practical purposes Sam had been enjoying a double-sized shoebox of a room all to himself with no need to worry about waking someone up with screaming nightmares or making him look at Sam weird for having salt along the door and window. That had been an issue Sam had dealt with during his own Freshman year rooming with Luis, and had probably contributed to the higher than expected levels of stress that had prompted him finally taking Brady's suggestion and making that first appointment with Dr Lehrer.

And now, very suddenly and without warning, his roommate was in their room, his belongings arranged around his half of the space as if he'd always been there, and Sam didn't quite know what to do with this situation.

"Heya, Sam," Daniel sighed when Sam just stared at him for a long moment. "So, I'm gonna need to crash here for a couple days, if that's okay with you."

"It's your room too," Sam found himself answering as he stepped inside and closed the door. "I mean, technically. You okay, man?"

"Hm?" Daniel looked up, surprised, then huffed. "Oh, no, yeah, I'm just peachy. Really. Tom's parents are in town for the weekend and he's not out to them yet, so he can't really be seen living in a single-room apartment with another guy, even an old friend from home," he finished with a noticeable edge of bitterness.

"Damn, that sucks," Sam offered. It really did sound like it sucked, even if Sam couldn't quite relate. His only family already knew he was out, his boyfriend (was Jimmy still his boyfriend?) was long-distance, and the chances of Dean or John showing up to visit were astronomically low. Still, he could appreciate the amount of emotional pain this must be putting Daniel through. "Well, if you can deal with me being in and out for work all weekend, you're welcome to take back your old bed."

"Thanks, dude," Daniel sighed. "You getting ready to hit the books or hit the hay?"

"Uh, neither," Sam winced, reaching up to rub the back of his neck, just barely remembering in time that he was holding his dinner. "I, uh, I've got a letter to write tonight."

"A letter?" Daniel's eyebrows went up. "Like, actual pen and paper and stamp letter?"

"Actual pen and paper and stamp letter," Sam nodded, lips twisting up in a wry smile as he sat down at his desk. "So I'm probably not going to be very talkative, but I'm also probably going to bang my head on the desk a few times or start arguing with myself or something."

"So you'll be like me when I'm writing my term papers," Daniel teased. "Yeah, I can cope with your headcase moments. Feel like sharing who you're writing to? Girlfriend?"

"Boyfriend," Sam corrected, then winced, reaching up automatically to grip the ring for reassurance. "Sort of. It's complicated."

"More complicated than him not being out to his parents?" Daniel winced. "Sorry, dude, you don't have to answer that. I'm just kinda...."

"It's okay, man, I get it," Sam assured him. "I'll tell you about Jimmy sometime, but, uh...."

"But right now you're getting antsy to write your boy and I'm stopping you," Daniel guessed, but at least he was smirking so he probably wasn't offended. "Go on, I'll just chill over here, catching up on my French Lit reading."

"Good luck with that," Sam told him, meaning every word, and then forced himself to tune his roommate out and focus on the page in front of him as he opened his notebook.

The first thing he did, as he'd promised himself, was rewrite the list in order of the day each topic should be covered. The old list was screwed up into a ball and absently tossed towards the trashcan. Next, he turned to a fresh sheet of paper without any impressions from the previous page. There he hesitated, staring at the page and the point of his pencil poised to press into the paper. Pencil was easy, wasn't it? Safe. He could erase something if he wanted to, but even when he'd written his first letter in pencil he hadn't erased anything. Scribbled through it, yes, but not erased it.

Hesitantly, he put the pencil down and tore a sheet of paper from his notebook, then took a deep breath and picked up the fountain pen he'd been given. It took a moment to figure out how to open the cap, and another moment to open the barrel and check for whether or not there was any ink inside. To his surprise, there was, and Sam wondered if Jimmy had filled the ink barrel himself in hopes of prompting a faster response from Sam. Certainly his repetitious plea for Sam to write back would support that idea, but Sam could have just been presuming.

The pen was easier to reassemble than it had been to disassemble, now that he knew how the thing worked. Testing the weight of it in his hand was odd, but he thought he might be able to get used to it eventually. It was awkward finding a comfortable way to hold the wider-than-a-pencil barrel, but eventually he managed to get a good enough grip that he wasn't worried about the pen sliding out of his hand. Practicing writing with it proved a lot easier than he'd feared, though he was glad he did. The ink took a moment to flow down to the end of the nib, and then it was a matter of regulating just enough pressure to keep the ink flowing without making the lines too thick from pressing so hard that the tip of the nib parted. Making a mental note to write a couple of practice words every time he used the pen to make sure the ink was flowing, Sam set aside the scratch sheet and began his letter.

_My dearest darling and most beloved James,_

Sam paused and stared at the line he had just written, then snorted to himself and drew a line through it before starting again one line below.

 ~~ _My dearest darling and most beloved James,_~~ _  
_ _Dear Jimmy,_

_I got your last letter yesterday (Thursday) and have spent all of today thinking about how I was going to respond. Yes, I made a list. Yes, you may laugh about the list. No, you may not know in advance what the list says. You'll just have to wait and see._

There. That should be teasing enough to get back at Jimmy for his own teasing while letting him know Sam wasn't mad at him for teasing. Not that he thought Jimmy would have worried about him being mad, but it was the principle of the matter.

_I should probably also tell you that my roommate moved back into our dorm. Normally he's gone, staying in_

Sam paused, frowning at the letter. He shouldn't be sharing Daniel's current issues with his boyfriend, even with Jimmy, so he really shouldn't talk about the details that Daniel had given him. He'd ask later if Daniel minded him sharing stuff with Jimmy, but for now it was best to err on the side of caution.

_other accommodations, but this weekend he's back. He's not the type to snoop in my stuff, but he did ask about me writing an actual letter with pen and paper and a stamp, so I admitted that I'm writing to you._

_I'm kind of glad that I got your letter when I did. Thursday is my regular appointment day with Dr Lehrer, the on-campus psychologist. I don't know what you may have heard about how things were for me after That Night, but "bad" would be a good start. The nightmares I had about the accident were just the tip of the iceberg. That first letter was Dr Lehrer's suggestion, and I'm beyond grateful I took it. I actually didn't have a nightmare last night after reading your letter. It may not last, brains are weird like that and I'm not going to hope that just having solid confirmation that you're alive and healing from the accident will magically make my subconscious stop torturing me with what-ifs, but I'm grateful nonetheless._

That was probably the most he could really say about the nightmares without delving into details of how Jimmy died in every nightmare. It also alluded to Dean having talked to Jimmy about Sam without mentioning him directly, so there was something to pick up on that he could expand on later, or even just invite Jimmy to expand on to him. He glanced at the list, but that was all he had planned to talk about today - clarifying their relationship status could wait for Saturday's letter - so instead he decided to mention his job.

_The extra sleep helped keep me going through my only class for the day, which was the required English class, and into my Friday afternoon shift at Stanford's campus library. I probably should have taken a safer job like barista or security guard, but foolish me hoped that being surrounded by books would be fun. I forgot to factor in my fellow students and the approaching horror that is midterms. I swear, one kid nearly took my head off when I had to tell him the copy of Maxwell's Treatise he wanted was checked out and we didn't have the earlier edition. I only hope that watching this madness from the outside will help me avoid becoming one of the monsters when it's my turn to face midterms with unavailable sources. Freshman year's midterms and finals were bad enough!_

Sam paused again and stared at the way he had worded that. He usually avoided even uttering the word "monster", too worried about letting something about hunting slip. Was it too revealing? Would Jimmy think it was just a turn of phrase? What about when Sam was ready to explain hunting to him? What the hell had Dean _said_ to him?!

Sam groaned aloud and scrubbed his hands back through his hair, nearly stabbing himself in the eye with his pen before he remembered it was in his hand. This was getting him nowhere. It was on the paper, it was written down, it could be a turn of phrase or a lead-in to a later letter's reveal, but there it was and it was too big to cross out and not be blazingly obvious and curiosity-inducing. He'd just have to live with it and whatever reaction Jimmy had. At least he probably wouldn't know until a week later.

_Tomorrow is my double shift at the library. Saturday morning and afternoon. I probably shouldn't have done that, but it is what it is, and now I get to see if I can handle the pace. If you're still the type to pray, say one for me?_

_Sincerely yours,_ _  
_ _Sam_

Letting out a quiet groan, Sam forced his fingers to uncurl from the pen and set it down on the desk, leaning back in his chair and stretching, trying to work the stiffness out of his arms and shoulders and upper back. Now that the letter was done, it was incredibly difficult to keep himself from second-guessing everything he wrote as well as everything he didn't write, but he was determined to stay committed to this course of action. To that end, he made himself pick up the fountain pen and screw the cap back onto it before setting it in pride of place on the back of the desk next to the cheap day planner he used to track assignments, then eyed the letter. Was it safe to rip it out of the notebook yet? How long did fountain pen ink take to dry?

"Done already?"

Sam very nearly grabbed the pen to throw at the unexpected voice before remembering that he wasn't actually alone in the room. Letting out a long breath, he shot Daniel an apologetic look in time to see his roommate giving him a scrutinizing, narrow stare that made Sam feel like he was under a microscope. The look was gone a moment later, but Sam wondered at it even as he belatedly remembered that Daniel had asked him a question.

"Yeah, for now," he said, reaching up to rub his face and try to resettle his nerves. "He made such a big deal about wanting me to write back that I'm doing a letter a day, so they're gonna be kind of short."

"Dude, you tuned me out for half an hour straight," Daniel said, more than a little incredulity in his voice. "I know you said you weren't going to be talkative, but damn!"

"It's a gift?" Sam joked weakly. Daniel snorted with obvious disbelief at him, and Sam shrugged. "Well, it's me anyway. Feel privileged, I don't tune out just anybody when I'm focusing on shit."

"I'm duly honored by your ability to completely ignore my existence," Daniel intoned, smirking when Sam shot him a disgruntled glare. "You good, though?"

"Yeah, man, I'm... I'm good," Sam nodded. He glanced back at the letter. It looked dry now, so he gingerly lifted the page and tore it from the notebook, testing the corner of his signature with his fingertip and breathing a sigh of relief when it came away clean. Immediately, he folded up the letter and, remembering what he'd done with Jimmy's letter, left the desk to cross to his bed and dig for the folded pages under his pillow to get the address Jimmy had given him. "Hey, uh... you know if you ever need to talk, I can at least listen and sympathize."

"I guess," Daniel shrugged, his expression going a little pensive. "Maybe later. I kinda... can't right now. Y'know?"

"Yeah, I know," Sam nodded. "No hurry, man."

"Right," Daniel let out a breath. "Welp. Guess it's bedtime, if neither of us is feeling the bar and party scene tonight."

"I'd ask when you've ever known me to be into the bar and party scene, but I'm not sure I want to know the answer," Sam huffed. The envelope was quickly addressed, this time with the pencil he'd forsaken for the actual letter, and one of his last three remaining stamps stuck to the corner.

"First night I was here there was that dorm party to welcome us Freshies?" Daniel raised an eyebrow at Sam, who blinked back, not sure where his roommate was going with this. "You're twenty, but you were knocking back whiskey like a seasoned drinker, and you gave me the most helpful tips for avoiding a hangover. Only so many conclusions to draw from something like that."

"Okay, I guess that's fair," Sam snorted as he got up to find a less dirty shirt to sleep in. He also didn't offer to explain, since he wasn't exactly keen on admitting that he knew how to handle his liquor because it was right up there with gun maintenance and how to exorcise a ghost or spirit in Necessary Life Knowledge As Determined By John Winchester. Telling his therapist was one thing, but Daniel was still a technical stranger for all they were going to be actually living in the same room all weekend for the first time since the year began.

After a moment where Daniel waited and Sam continued not to explain, the other boy snorted and flopped back onto his bed. "Fine, fine, you man of mystery, keep your illicit covert operations secrets!"

"Thank you, I will," Sam snarked back cheekily, catching the pillow Daniel threw at him and launching it back with a practiced underhand, laughing when it caught the gobsmacked Daniel in the face. Dropping his dust-covered shirt into his laundry bag and reminding himself to save time on Sunday to actually do his laundry, Sam pulled the cleaner t-shirt over his head and shed his jeans, crawling into his own bed with a tired groan. "Night, man."

"Night," Daniel answered after another moment of silence. Sam settled himself down into bed under the blanket and, with a silent prayer for the safety of his dad and Dean and Jimmy, and to not wake Daniel with screaming nightmares tonight, he gripped the ring around his neck through his shirt and closed his eyes.

He was asleep before he'd even started to wonder if he should count sheep.

**D** ANIEL WAS GONE before Sam woke up, which Sam didn't necessarily consider odd since he wasn't familiar with Daniel's habits any more than Daniel was familiar with his. There was also no note left, but all of his roommate's belongings were still there, so Sam held whatever speculation he might have had in reserve as he went about getting ready for his morning shift at the library.

Today was what Sam considered a "gauntlet day" in terms of what he could expect. Saturday was a rare day for anyone to actually have class as most of the professors were perfectly happy to give students weekends, and the few that held Saturday classes were usually in the Arts and Humanities. This meant that most of the students coming into the library were the ones who had put off coming during the week and were now desperately scrambling to find sources and this book or that reference or this one extremely specific edition of this book by this author that had one mention of this topic in this paragraph on page three hundred and eight... Sam honestly hoped the poor guy managed to find it, for his grade's sake if nothing else, but he still thought it was uncalled for to make disparaging comments on Sam's intelligence for not having every book in Stanford's library memorized.

During lunch, he took out his statistics textbook to review from the previous week's class and start reading ahead for Monday, feeling the tugging guilt at having not studied the previous two nights on account of writing Jimmy. He'd have to figure out a way to balance that, partition off his evening to allow for both studying and letter-writing, because he wasn't going to stop writing to Jimmy, but he also knew he couldn't allow the letters to distract him from his classes. And Jimmy's letter coupled with the pen made it seem like he was so proud of Sam, more than Sam's own family had been at least where Sam could see, that he didn't want to risk falling behind at letting Jimmy down.

 _Quit that,_ he scolded himself. _You're not letting Jimmy down if your grades slip a couple of points and you know it. You've been over this with Dr Lehrer, you know the person you're afraid of letting down is yourself because you don't want to slip up and fail and have that somehow prove Dad right about college being a waste of time and money and effort with nothing useful to show for it at the end. Don't let Dad's bullshit try and find a space in your imaginary boyfriend's mouth!_

The mental image that produced, despite not having been meant literally, was both disturbing and hilarious, and Sam found himself randomly shaking his head and snickering over it during his second shift. One of his coworkers, a bespectacled redhead with a rainbow heart patch sewn onto the sleeve of her denim jacket, asked him to share the joke if it was distracting him so much, and snorted at him when he actually did.

"Glad to know I'm not the only one whose mind tries to pull weird shit like that," she muttered, and then had to rush off to calm the nerves of a frazzled-looking TA who appeared to be having a breakdown in the Philosophy section.

The random solidarity over weird thoughts even helped Sam push the thought aside to finish work with, if not high energy, at least also not with crippling exhaustion. He made it back to the dorm without being waylaid by any new emergencies to find Daniel back again and looking pissed.

"Nope," Sam shook his head and dumped his messenger bag on the end of his bed. "Come on, we're going to go get dinner."

"Not hungry," Daniel growled petulantly, but he stood up and started shoving his feet into a pair of newish-looking cross-trainers anyway.

"Then you can come to the Commons with me and watch _me_ eat until either you get hungry or get put off food for life," Sam snorted, a stray thought sending him to grab his cheap laptop and the power plug just in case and tucking it under his arm. "You're not staying holed up in the dorm tonight any more than I am."

"Not part of the party scene my ass," Daniel huffed as he followed Sam back out of the dorm. He was starting to look less pissed off, at least, which Sam had been hoping for, and was casting curious looks at the laptop, which Sam also found encouraging.

"Well, if you really want a party, I could always call up Luis and Brady and see if they can round up a few more people to hang out with us," Sam drawled, smirking as Daniel snorted. "Seriously, man, we're just going to get our allotted meal plan sustenance and maybe watch cat videos on my laptop, shake off the stress a bit."

"Whatever you say, MOM," Daniel said, then paused when Sam made a choking noise somewhere between a laugh and a croak as he nearly swallowed his tongue. "Okay, that was way weirder than it sounded in my head. I meant 'MOM' like M-O-M, man of mystery, you get that, right?"

"S'okay, man, I've had weirder nicknames," Sam rasped. Certainly he'd had more offensive nicknames, usually from Dean, but Dean could be a real jerk sometimes and Sam was supposed to be Not Thinking About Dean right now anyway. He cleared his throat and continued, "I'll let you know if a nickname ever gets too weird, but so far you're fine."

"If you say so," Daniel said with as much dubiousness as Sam could have expected. He was still following Sam trustingly out of the dorm towards the Commons and their campus food choices, however, so Sam figured he hadn't hit Daniel's threshold for weirdness yet.

The Commons was pretty well populated when they arrived, mostly due to the hour and recent release of many from late afternoon classes. It took a few minutes for them to find a table, which Sam took possession of while sending Daniel off to get food. Daniel returned with a tray from the Mexican fusion section and Sam left him to guard the table and Sam's laptop while he went foraging for his own meal from the deluxe salad bar. When he got back, Daniel had the laptop open and positioned in the middle of the table where they could both see the screen if they sat next to each other, and he politely looked away when Sam fast-typed his password in one-handed as he slid into the open seat to Daniel's left.

"Dude, I thought you were kidding about the cat videos," Daniel snorted when Sam typed "funny cat videos" into the web browser search bar.

"Can you think of anything better to watch for relaxing and unwinding from stress?" Sam challenged, then added with a narrow look, "That can be watched in _public_ rather than the privacy of the dorm room with lube and a box of tissues."

"I didn't even say anything!" Daniel exclaimed, eyes too wide and hands held up in professed innocence. He quirked an eyebrow at Sam as he went on, "Though now I'm curious about how your mind went there so fast."

"I have an older brother," Sam huffed. "And he's the reason my laptop keyboard sticks on the arrow, enter, and right-hand shift keys."

"Dude," Daniel eyed the laptop with a new sort of morbid fascination. "And you didn't burn it and buy a new one?"

"If I bought a new laptop every time Dean borrowed it without asking, I'd have paid my tuition to Toshiba by now." Or at least what would have been his tuition if he hadn't gotten a full ride scholarship. Sam decided not to mention that part as he found a likely looking link and clicked on it. "And he never got anything on it I couldn't clean off with a virus scan or a pack of Lysol wipes. Here we go. Funny cat video compilation, half an hour long."

Despite Daniel's initial dubiousness, the distraction of mediocre food and funny cat videos did appear to be working to lift his mood right up until Daniel's boyfriend arrived, wearing a dress and make-up, with his parents in tow and looking quietly miserable behind the forced smile. The trio joined their table and so began the most awkward half hour of Sam's life since coming to Stanford. He did feel mildly accomplished by getting a laugh out of both Daniel _and_ Tom when Tom's parents asked if he was Daniel's boyfriend and Sam unthinkingly responded, "No, I'm his MOM friend," but for the most part he felt more like a useless outsider watching someone else's drama up close and personal. Several times he almost reached for his phone to text Dean or Jimmy only to be brought up short by a lack of working number or a lack of nerve. In the end, it was Sam who excused them both with the fabrication that Daniel had promised to quiz Sam on his American History class and they'd left the notes in the dorm.

"That definitely could have gone worse," he assured Daniel in a low voice as they made their escape.

"I think I hate them for doing this to Tom," Daniel muttered back. "Except then I feel guilty for hating them because they always treated me like a son instead of just their kid's friend, but the way he feels like he has to hide everything...."

"I get it, man," Sam nodded, wincing as he thought of some of the rows he'd had with his own father and how much worse they could have been if Sam had been dependant on the man to go to college instead of disowned for even wanting to. Things had been awkward enough when he and Jimmy had been carefully dodging the questions from Jimmy's parents about why he was spending so much time with a high school student, even though Sam had been eighteen already. Thinking of Jimmy reminded him of the letter he still needed to write, as well as the numerous impulses to text that he'd stifled during the awkward dinner, and he added, "Hey, how much of this can I tell Jimmy about?"

"How much are you ready to tell me about Jimmy?" Daniel asked, eyebrows raised. Sam winced.

"I can tell you that he lives in Normal, Illinois, and is a graduate of Notre Dame," he offered. "Anything else is..." He felt his throat starting to close up and his chest tighten and lifted his free hand to grope for the ring under his shirt. "...complicated."

"Complicated," Daniel repeated, studying Sam narrowly. Whatever he saw in Sam's face made him grimace, then shrug. "Illinois is a fair hike away from Maryland, dude, tell him whatever you want. If he's not the type to keep other people's secrets--" 

"He is!"

"--but if he lets something slip," Daniel said pointedly, "then there's not much chance of it getting back to the home crew in Silver Spring."

"I'll avoid using names anyway," Sam promised as they stepped into their dorm. Daniel waved him off, going over to his bed and flopping face down onto it with a grunt, punched the pillow twice, and then settled into bed on top of the covers like he was planning to shut out the world for a while.

Well, fair enough. Sam was planning on shutting out everything except Jimmy for the next hour or so, or however long it took him to write this letter. A glance at the list reminded him that today was the day he planned to ask about that cryptic comment Jimmy had made about grad school in his letter. Sam was irritated by his own predictable curiosity, especially since the accident had clearly deferred Jimmy returning to grad school when he'd originally planned after his gap year back home to get more practical experience with mechanical engineering.

The pen was right where he'd left it, and so was the scrap paper. Sam scribbled a few lines and curls on the page, then doodled a couple of stick figures next to an equally stick-like bike. When he realized that he was starting to doodle hearts around the stick figure drawing like some kind of lovesick teenaged girl, he huffed at himself and turned to the open and ready notebook page.

_Dear Jimmy,_

_Well, I've tried to be patient and wait you out, but there's only so much patience I have to claim anymore. You can laugh, I know you want to. Just like I know you're wanting to tell me what you meant about grad school. You were all set up to return to Notre Dame for grad school, at least as far as I remember, so what did you mean about looking into other options?_

Sam hesitated, biting his lower lip as he considered how to word the next part he wanted to say. He didn't want to just drop the subject and jump into the next on his list - he was still working up the nerve to even think about it - but he also didn't want to have the filler of babbling about his day to just spring out of nowhere.

_I don't even know how you would manage options that are actual options. For me, what college I went to was determined by which college offered the most complete scholarship since I knew I'd never be able to afford going otherwise. I think my old pastor might have kept the rest of the acceptance letters, but since Stanford was the only one to offer a full ride this is where I ended up. Don't get me wrong, I love it here, but I guess there's no harm admitting that I applied to Notre Dame, too, in what I thought would be your memory. It was_

Sam paused, staring at the paper as he tried to wrestle with the English language to produce something about how he'd felt getting that bare acceptance letter with no offered scholarship alongside the other letters from Princeton, Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale with more generous scholarship offers that still hadn't beat out Stanford's offer of a full ride. "Crushing" would have covered it, like another blow to his already fragile state, as if the universe and the scholastic world at large was telling him he wasn't good enough to go to Jimmy's school and walk the halls Jimmy had walked in the wake of his death.

 _He's alive, though,_ Sam reminded himself, gripping the ring more tightly. _He's alive and healing, if not completely healed, and he doesn't blame you for the accident._

A muffled noise from across the room nearly jolted Sam out of his seat before he remembered Daniel was there. He glanced over his shoulder, but his roommate was still face down in the pillow of his bed, so Sam turned his attention back to the letter and picked up after the blot of ink his hesitation had left.

_It was not in the cards for me to go there, unfortunately. Maybe something would have prompted me to face the nightmares and write to you sooner if I had._

_I missed you._

Sam had to stop there. Carefully moving the pen away from the paper, and the notebook back away from the edge of the desk, he dropped his head to the fake wood surface and groaned to himself. He hadn't meant to go there, not yet, but it was like his hand had bypassed his brain entirely to write from his stupid, battered heart, and he wanted to kick himself. _He_ was the one who had ended things between them, even though it had been John's command that he do so, so he shouldn't be the one to lay out words like "I miss you" as if their separation wasn't his own damned fault!

 _That's your father talking,_ Dr Lehrer's voice spoke up from the back of his mind, as calm and rational and gentle as the man always sounded whenever he pointed out John's mantras slipping into Sam's speech. _What does_ **_Sam_ ** _think?_

"I think I'm allowed to miss the man I love, especially knowing that he's alive to be missed," Sam mumbled into the desk.

Well. He had wanted a way to bring up the question of their relationship status, and if he was going to be optimistic about anything, well, Jimmy's letter had been fairly encouraging at least as far as still thinking of Sam with affection. Sam felt the heat of a flush creeping up his neck and resisted the urge to dart over to his bed to retrieve the letter, mentally promising himself that he could reread it later, _after_ he finished writing _this_ letter. Picking himself back up off the desk, he pulled the notebook back towards himself and, after just a little more hesitation, continued writing.

_I missed you. I missed you when I thought you were dead, and somehow I miss you more knowing that you're alive. I wish I knew how to explain myself better, to you and to my friends. My roommate asked me about the letter-writing and I didn't know what to tell him, how to explain our_

Sam paused and stared at that last sentence, his lower lip being worried between his teeth. This was the part he was most worried about trying to explain. Jimmy's letter had been about as circumspect as Sam himself had been referring to their....

 _You can't even think the words?_ Sam huffed in irritation at himself. _Still? You_ **_broke up_ ** _with him, broke his heart, and left the morning after his wreck about which you only learned from the fucking radio when it was too late to turn around!_

"I also broke my own heart," he sighed, barely loud enough to hear his own words in his ear. "Not just Jimmy's. And my nightmares kept picking at the wound so it never healed."

_our... relationship, or even what to call whatever we are now. The best I could do when my roommate asked was say it's "complicated" like I didn't break both our hearts that night before I left and spend the next year and a half having nightmares of your death_

Sam growled and scratched through that last part irritably. Hadn't he promised himself not to guilt-trip Jimmy?!

 ~~ _having nightmares of your death_~~ _regretting it. I want to call you my boyfriend, the way I always quietly wished I could when we were together, but after the way I left I don't feel that I have the right to do so without consulting you first. I can't read your mind, so I don't feel I can claim a relationship with you that may no longer be mutual after all this time. I'm not saying I need an immediate answer, or that you're even obligated to give me one, but I'm asking anyway... where we stand._

_I'm sorry if it seems out of nowhere, asking that. My roommate's situation with his boyfriend has been bringing up a lot of empathy and uncertainty lately. I asked him what I can tell you about their situation first, so I'm not breaking any confidences by telling you that my roommate's boyfriend not being out to his parents and those same parents coming to visit this weekend has shaken them both, not the least of which being my roommate having to move back into our room and out of his boyfriend's apartment so they don't know their child is "living in sin" as your mother would have called it._

Sam winced and scowled down at the page. Karen Novak had been the very picture of a proper Catholic housewife, one of many reasons that he and Jimmy had kept the exact nature of their relationship close to the vest. Her disapproving looks over Jimmy spending so much time with Sam, "taking the boy away from friends his own age and riding around on that _machine_ " as he'd heard her say, had been more than enough of a hint to Sam that explaining the reason Jimmy was free to take Sam away from his nonexistent friends was probably not a good idea.

_To be honest, I really wish you could have been here tonight. Dragging my roommate out of our dorm for distraction would have been easier with someone else more naturally outgoing to push me further towards being positive and social for my roommate's sake, or at least being there to laugh at me when I declared myself my roommate's mom friend to his boyfriend's parents._

_You can absolutely laugh at that. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to live that one down anytime soon. Or ever._

Definitely not if Dean ever heard about it, anyway. Sam bit his lower lip and tried not to think about the likelihood of his brother actually meeting Daniel. That was still under the heading of Not Thinking About This Yet.

_I love you_

Sam winced and crossed that out.

 ~~ _I love you_~~ _I miss you_

Nope, too much like guilt-tripping. Sam crossed that out as well.

~~_I love you_ _I miss you_~~ _I hope to hear from you soo_

Sam growled under his breath and harshly scratched that out too. Honesty, he was going for honesty! Closing his eyes, he took in a deep breath, held it for the count of five, and then slowly let it out again.

~~_I love you_ _I miss you_ _I hope to see you soo_~~ _I love you, Jimmy._

_Sincerely yours,_ _  
_ _Sam_

The pen dropped to the scratch paper by the side of his notebook and Sam slumped back into the unyielding embrace of his desk chair with a tired groan. That had been harder to write than he'd anticipated, and did not bode well for his ability to write either of the letters that covered his family and their penchant for hunting down supernatural beings and creatures preying on humans and killing them. Sam silently cursed John Winchester's paranoia for the seventy-millionth time; he could have used the practice with explaining the supernatural and hunting before he had to explain it to the man he loved.

And his roommate was now snoring fakely behind him.

Well, at least he wasn't going to have to deal with any more questions tonight. Sam scrubbed a hand over his face and picked up the pen again, carefully screwing the cap back on before placing it more carefully at the top of the desk. The letter was checked, then folded and put in the waiting envelope and another stamp placed before Sam scribbled out the necessary addresses in pencil.

It was only as he was dropping into bed, his hand around the ring once more, that he realized the campus post office would be closed on Sunday anyway.

**S** UNDAY DAWNED, AS it always did, far too early for Sam's liking. Habits of a lifetime ensured that he was unable to truly sleep in the way he had tried when he first arrived at Stanford, but he was no longer dragging himself up at the crack of not-even-dawn for rigorous combat training before school. The days he didn't have a morning class, he'd use the extra time afforded his early rising to go for a run, joining the sparse collection of similarly health-minded students seeking to shed or avoid the dreaded "freshman fifteen". Saturday, he now had work bright and early, so no time for a run but also no class to get to, and since he was at work he still had to get properly dressed into something presentable rather than slump into his seat in whichever lecture hall required his presence wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt or hoodie.

On Sunday, however, he went to church.

This Sunday felt different, somehow. He hadn't had any nightmares that he could remember, and so felt far more rested than he usually did. Unlike the past year and a half, where he had sat in the campus church with hunched shoulders hanging off the words of the priest as if he could find some kernel of salvation within the rambling sermon, this time he sat straight in the pew, attentive but not desperately so. It was invigorating, in a way, and just a little enlightening as well. The priest really did like to ramble on his way to whatever the point of the sermon was supposed to be.

His prayers, too, felt less desperate, more hopeful and light than despairing and frightened. Jimmy was alive. He could pray for his health and continued healing rather than pray that his soul was at peace. He still offered up the usual requests for peace to the souls who'd gone before and for safety for Dean and his Dad, but the silent recitation came to an end with a feeling of being more settled inside his skin than feeling wrung out and hollow.

The settled feeling carried him through the first part of his Sunday shift at the library, earning him several surprised looks and a couple of tentative smiles from the students whose desperation he greeted with "How can I help you?" and a patient listening ear followed by his best efforts to help them track down whatever book or reference they needed. His supervisor ended up letting him leave early when the press of desperate students eased up closer to dinner time, and he swung through the Commons for a portable meal on his way back to the dorm.

Daniel was notably absent from the room when he got there, which Sam figured was to be expected, but the belongings the other young man had brought over were still arrayed around the second bed which... probably didn't bode well, but unless and until Daniel appeared to provide answers, Sam's questions would have to remain tucked away for now. He had a letter to write, and this one was going to be a bit of a doozy.

_Dearest Jimmy,_

_I'm not going to get tired of being able to write that any time soon. That's part of why I'm continuing to write letters rather than calling the way your letter strongly hinted. It feels like every time I write your name following the salutation, I'm reaffirming that you're alive._

_Admittedly, part of the reason is also fear. After the way I learned about the accident from a radio announcement on our way out of town that Dad changed the station on when he realized... well, I don't know if he realized what we were hearing, but I did. I don't really remember my reaction, that part's a blur, but I remember calling your cell number over and over, getting your voicemail every time until the point when the mailbox was full and it wouldn't even connect me to your voice anymore._

Sam paused and swallowed, glancing at his phone as he reached up to touch the ring for comfort. Jimmy was alive. The letter indicated that he still had the same number, even though Sam's number had changed, and Sam had copied the numbers in his phone over exactly when the family had done their tri-monthly phone rotation. He could pick up his phone, scroll the contacts to Jimmy's number, and call him right now. There was nothing stopping him.

Nothing but the sharp clench of fear that gripped his chest and sank leaden into his gut with a twist that made him shudder and look away from the innocuous little device and back to the letter.

_I think that's what must have convinced me that you were dead. Each consecutive call that went unanswered, and then the two weeks after where no one called me back, even to tell me to stop calling. I know that wasn't your fault; you were in the hospital in a coma, and then Dad made us all change numbers. That was when the nightmares started in earnest. Before that, I was still getting nightmares, but they weren't so clear and definitively ending in your death._

_I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that to come out so_

Sam paused and stared at the words he had written, teeth worrying at his lower lip. Objectively, the words didn’t sound bad, but he still felt the need to apologize. There was just something about it that felt accusing, even though the words themselves weren’t, and he couldn’t put his finger on why.

_I didn’t mean that to come out so… I don’t even know. The last thing I want to do is accuse you or blame you for any of this, because it’s not your fault. And I can hear your voice in my head now saying it’s not my fault either, which is actually a first._

Sam growled under his breath and moved to scratch out that last part, then paused. Honesty. He was supposed to be honest with Jimmy, even about the bad parts.

_My brain has been very “good” about trying to tell me that your accident was my fault, so it’s a mixed kind of relief to hear something different and more positive from it. I don't know if I believe it yet, but meeting regularly with Dr Lehrer has helped, and your letter helped a lot. I can only hope that further communication will help strengthen that positive voice to help drown out the anxiety and nightmares. I haven't had one since receiving your letter, which is weird and starting to worry me a little even as grateful for the reprieve as I am._

_Apparently a side benefit to not having nightmares has been being able to pay more attention in church to what the priest is saying up there. I don't know_

The door to the dorm room slamming open broke Sam's concentration and had him twisting in his seat and reaching on automatic for a gun he no longer carried. Mercifully, Daniel didn't notice, just stomped into their dorm and slammed the door behind him before flinging himself down onto his bed with a growl of frustration. Sam hesitated, his hand still on the intangible butt of the gun that was currently taped to the underside of his bed rather than resting in the back of his jeans, then slowly relaxed from his ready position. "Rough day?"

"I am the biggest idiot in the history of idiocy," Daniel grumbled into his pillow, "and I can't figure out if it's because I just hurt the man I love or if he's just been stringing me along this whole time."

Sam blinked. That sounded ominous. He glanced at the letter, at the three words beginning his next sentence which was already slipping away from him, then capped his pen and set it beside the notebook, swivelling his chair around to give Daniel his full attention. "Alright, let's hear it."

"Don't you have a letter to write?" Daniel grumbled, an edge to his tone that was almost mocking as he pulled his face out of the pillow. The look of surprise and chagrin on his face when he saw Sam turned to face him made Sam's metaphorical hackles lower again and renewed his resolve.

"Jimmy's six hundred miles away and there's no mail service on Sunday anyway," he said, leaning forward and propping his elbows on his knees. "He can wait. Tell me what happened?"

Daniel hesitated another moment, but eventually caved and began talking, telling Sam about agreeing to spend the day with Tom and his parents as Tom's moral support, how things had just gotten more and more awkward the longer he'd spent in their company redirecting the conversation away from the Forbidden Topics (and Sam could hear the capital letters in that), how finally he'd had to make an excuse about still needing Sam's help to study just to get away from the choking tension, and how Mrs Turner had hugged him and said it was so good to see him again and that it was a shame they hadn't gotten to meet his boyfriend while they were there.

"And then I opened my stupid mouth and said, 'yeah, if I didn't know better I'd think he was ashamed of me'," Daniel groaned, flopping backwards onto the bed again. "And yes, I know that was a shitty thing to say even before I saw Tom's face when I said it, but I was just so tired of standing next to him in front of his parents and hiding how much I just wanted to wrap him up in my arms and... I dunno, put a coat around him and bustle him back to the apartment to change out of that awful skirt and blouse he hates wearing and back into pants because it hurts to watch him be that miserable and not be able to do anything about it or say anything about it because doing that could hurt him even worse!"

"Okay," Sam said slowly. "I get why you're angsting over having hurt him, though it sounds like an honest apology and explaining to him what you just told me would go a ways towards fixing things. Why are you wondering if he's been leading you on?"

"I... I'm not, not really," Daniel sighed, staring up at the ceiling. "Just nerves, I guess. Seeing the way he flinched and wouldn't meet my eyes after I said it."

"Anxiety brain is a little bitch," Sam murmured, startling a laugh out of Daniel.

"You get that from Dr Lehrer?"

"Creative writing teacher at my second-to-last high school, actually," Sam smirked a little, the smirk fading a bit when he remembered why the woman had said that to him. Mrs Driscoll had been the one and only person in whom he'd confided his worries about how being with Jimmy was going to ruin the older boy's life if anyone discovered that their relationship was more than just the "good friends and mentor/student" thing they'd passed themselves off as in public while hiding their lingering hugs and soft open-mouthed kisses in the dark corners and literal closets and only twice daring to openly make out in the hotel room Sam lived in with his family when his Dad and brother weren't there to see. Sam reached up to the ring around his neck and gripped the metal curves through his shirt, then gently fished the ring out from underneath the cloth. "Do you still want to hear about Jimmy?"

"Mister Complicated?" Daniel blinked and sat up, concern and curiosity mingling in his expression. "I mean, yeah, dude, I wanna know, but you don't have to tell me just because I spilled all my shit to you."

"Oh, I know, man," Sam assured him. "This isn't some bizarro quid pro quo, just... I haven't talked to anyone about him besides Dr Lehrer in over a year, and I think I really need to. And I think maybe you need to hear it right now."

"Ominous," Daniel joked, but he crossed his legs and folded his hands in his lap. "I'm listening."

Sam nodded, then dropped his head to peer down at the ring hanging just within his line of sight on the chain around his neck, the light from the lamp glinting off the silver metal and blue glass faux gem. "We met when Dad moved me and my brother to Normal, Illinois. Jimmy's older than me by a few years and was home taking a semester break from Notre Dame before going on to graduate school." He snorted softly. "It was like a scene out of some stupid nineteen-fifties high school drama, me at the candy store with a few classmates when he came roaring up on his motorcycle looking like the kind of bad boy my brother always tried to act like only he was pulling it off way better than Dean ever could. He was picking up these special order chocolates for his mother's birthday, and we met eyes while he was waiting for the clerk to bring the box out of the back room.

"I'd never really believed in the concept of love at first sight before that moment," he all but whispered, reaching up to play with the ring a little. "I acted like a complete idiot, blushing and stammering while one of the guys I was with made the introductions. Jimmy was just so cool and calm... I thought for sure that he was just humoring the weird new kid at first, asking me about myself and listening to me stumble through half-confused answers I don't even remember anymore, so when the clerk brought out the chocolates I figured that was it and I should make an excuse about needing to get home so he wouldn't have to stick around, but..."

"But?" Daniel prompted, the bed creaking underneath him as he leaned even further forward. "Did he offer to give you a ride home on the back of his motorcycle or something?"

"You say that like it's a predictable outcome, but it still caught me by complete surprise when he did it," Sam huffed, lips tugging upwards in a smile. "It was the first time I'd ever been on a motorcycle, and he gave me his helmet to wear since he didn't have a second one."

"How old were you?" Daniel asked, the faintest bit of a frown starting to form. "I mean, if he was heading for graduate school and you were in high school..."

"Eighteen," Sam answered. "I started school a year late and Dad moved us around so much that I felt like I was barely keeping up some years. No chance to try and get ahead enough to skip a grade. You asking _is_ actually one of the reasons we kept it pretty quiet that we were spending so much time together for reasons that had very little to do with any kind of scholastic mentoring and a shared love of books and motorcycles. Normal wasn't exactly a progressive town and Jimmy's family were devout Catholics. I spent almost the whole two months we were together terrified that someone would find out that we were something other than just friends and that Jimmy would get hurt or lose his family over it."

"Did they?" Daniel's expression had cleared from the pensive frown at Sam's reassurances, but he was back to looking worried now.

"Not the way you're thinking, at least as far as I know," Sam shook his head. "Dad came home one afternoon and told us to pack up, we were leaving Normal first thing in the morning When I balked, he... didn't take it well, and then Dean opened his mouth and blurted out that I had a boyfriend."

"Your brother just outed you like that?" Daniel gaped.

"Dad already knew I'm bi and didn't care," Sam huffed. Surprising as that had been from a former Marine, John's lack of concern over whether his sons were attracted to girls or guys was something Sam had always considered a point in the man's favor. "It was the fact that I had formed enough of an attachment to have a boyfriend that upset him." Sam could feel his throat beginning to close up on him and he coughed to clear it, swallowing hard. "He told me I had to end the relationship, made enough allusions to the reasons we moved around so much that I was good and terrified for Jimmy's safety when I met him that evening and... and told him... we were over."

"Damn," Daniel sounded subdued. "I know you said it was complicated... So, wait, isn't he your ex now?"

Sam flinched. It hurt just as much as he'd thought it would to hear, even from someone else. His fingers closed around the ring tightly. "Technically yes," he choked out, "but also no. It's hard to explain, and not just because talking about it is hard."

Daniel was silent for a long moment. Sam tried not to curl in on himself under the weight of his roommate's stare while he wrestled with the words that wouldn't arrange themselves in a properly coherent order any more now than they had over the three separate sessions it had taken him to relate the incident to Dr Lehrer. Finally, Daniel spoke, startling Sam into looking up. "What's that you're always playing with?"

At first, Sam was confused, but then he realized that Daniel was looking at his chest where his hand still gripped Jimmy's ring tightly. "Oh… it's Jimmy's class ring from highschool, the same one I attended while I was in Normal." He glanced down again, forcing his fingers open again to visually trace over the lines and curves of the silver metal and black engraving and blue glass that was almost the same shade as Jimmy's eyes. "He gave it to me the first time he stayed the night with me, even though we didn't do anything beyond a lot of kissing and falling asleep together. Said something about being old-fashioned and wanting to do things right."

"And you still have it?" Daniel asked, eyebrows going up. "He didn't ask for it back when you ended things?"

"He didn't want to accept that it was over without an explanation, and I was so scared for him I couldn't give him one," Sam grimaced, rubbing the back of his neck. "I just burst into tears. I think he was about to get off the bike and come to me when Dad opened the door and yelled for me to get back inside and finish packing, that I'd better have everything I wanted packed by tomorrow morning or it was getting left behind. The look he gave Jimmy…."

"And Jimmy just left?" Daniel asked frowning again. "He didn't try to stay and have it out with your dad, or anything?"

"He left that night because I begged him to," Sam shook his head. "He didn't want to, but he was always so careful about respecting my boundaries that he didn't push... just revved the bike and drove away." Sam brushed his thumb over the blue glass. "Part of me kind of expected him to show up the next morning, but he wasn't there by the time we were leaving. I didn't find out why not until we were on the way out of town and the radio made the announcement about a motorcycle accident the night before."

"Yikes," Daniel winced, and Sam could see him putting the pieces together. "So Jimmy didn't come because he was in the accident, and you didn't reach out because you felt responsible?"

"Worse than that," Sam admitted, swallowing. "I tried calling, over and over, until his voicemail was full and never got an answer or a call back from anyone. I still don't know what happened to his phone, but between that and the nightmares every night for the last year and a half, until I wrote that first letter and actually got a response back I thought Jimmy was dead."

"If that's your definition of complicated, I will never question your use of it again," Daniel said after a long moment where he just stared at Sam. "So, wait, you know he's alive now. Why are you writing letters instead of calling him every night, or even texting?"

"That's also complicated," Sam deadpanned, catching the pillow Daniel threw at him one-handed and lobbing it back. "I want to. God knows I nearly did text him last night at dinner. I just... This might not make any sense, but it feels too fast. We were together for two whirlwind months that ended in tears and crushed metal. He was in the hospital, I was--" _Losing my mind..._ "--taking myself for an extended guilt trip every night. The letters are kind of like an extended and honest conversation we never got around to the first time, opening up in ways I thought we'd have time for later and never did. And if I'm writing it down, I'm not stumbling over my words like a lovesick idiot and getting tongue-tied because I just want to find out if he can still do that thing with _his_ tongue--"

"Whoa there, TMI, dude!" Daniel held up his hands. "I get it! It's kinda weird, but you did say it's complicated and you weren't kidding, so I get it. And I think you're right, I did need to hear that."

Whatever Sam might have said in response was lost even to Sam at the sudden frantic knocking on their dorm room door. Seeing Daniel freeze with an almost comical expression resembling the infamous "deer in oncoming headlights", Sam stifled a sigh and got up to answer the door.

Tom looked up as the door opened, his face pink and patchy from scrubbing, wearing sweatpants and an oversized blue hoodie. He looked up further when he realized that Sam had answered the door instead of Daniel, and the red in his face darkened. "Is he here?"

Sam stepped aside and waved Tom inside, closing the door again behind him to preserve their privacy as much as possible from their nosy dorm mates. Daniel had been frozen on his bed, but as he got a good look at Tom, particularly Tom's face, he got up and came forward to meet his boyfriend halfway. "Tom, God, I'm sorry--"

"I came out to Mom and Dad," Tom blurted out, interrupting Daniel's apology and effectively silencing him from the shock. "After you left. I told them everything, about being a boy, being gay, being with you, and Mom looked me in the eye and said they already knew!"

"They _knew_?!" Daniel choked out, stunned. "But... the whole weekend... asking about my boyfriend...?"

"Mom's 'subtle' way of trying to prod me into admitting it," Tom confessed. "And Dad said they figured it out because they're still getting bank statements on the joint account and put the clues together."

"Are they okay with everything?" Daniel asked, then shook himself and amended, "Are _you_ okay?"

"I never have to wear a fucking skirt agan," Tom said fervently. "And I've got their official blessing to keep living with you... I mean... if you still...."

"Tell you what," Sam spoke up, drawing startled looks from the two reunited guys who apparently _had_ forgotten he was there. "It's stupid late at night, so how about Tom lends me the keys to your place and I'll get a couple things together and go sleep over there for the night so you two can use the dorm to talk, make up, make out, whatever you want. Sound good?"

"Are you sure?" Tom asked. "I don't want to put you out of your own room...." The quick, guilty glance he shot at Daniel was as good as saying _The way I put my boyfriend out of our apartment,_ but Sam could see the way they were leaning into each other, clearly wanting to reconnect, and had already decided that discretion was the better part of minding his own damn business.

"Just don't do anything on my bed and we're good," he said instead, going to the desk and hastily folding up his notebook and papers and the fountain pen and envelope, shoving them into his messenger bag with his statistics textbook. "We can meet up for lunch and I'll help you get Daniel moved back in and give you back your keys."

"Thanks a bunch, dude," Daniel said as Tom dug into his sweatpants for his keys while Sam grabbed a change of clothes and his toilet kit.

"Hey, if I'm going to be your mom friend now, I might as well act like it," Sam joked as he accepted the keys and headed for the door. "That means being there when you need me and butting out when you don't. Have a good night!"

Giving up his dorm room bed for the night in exchange for Daniel and Tom having privacy also meant that Sam had a nice leisurely walk over to the off-campus housing to think about how he was going to finish his letter. Aside from being rather cathartic in ways he hadn't fully expected, telling Daniel about Jimmy and the breakup that wasn't technically a full breakup had helped put things a little more in perspective in a way that talking to Dr Lehrer hadn't quite managed, mostly because Daniel had asked different questions, but also because he was asking the same questions when Sam already had worked out answers. The talk had also made him face a few things that he should probably tell Jimmy about, too. His list had scheduled talking about his family for tomorrow and about hunting for Tuesday, but he could at least say in the letter that those explanations were coming. Thank God he had decided to save the reveal about his book series for Wednesday, because there was no way he would be up to more heavy talk after sitting through Professor Adler's scheduled ethics lecture.

The apartment was just as small as Sam remembered, though it seemed smaller for the clutter of hastily shed clothing chucked haphazardly towards the trash can amid a scatter of student debris. Sam hesitated only a moment before setting down his belongings and getting to work straightening up as much as he could without invading Tom's privacy, pulling the discarded clothing out of the trash and finding a fresh trash bag to put it in. He found a marker and labeled the bag "donations" in case Tom wanted to add anything else to the collection of skirts and dresses he was no longer obliged to keep in his closet, then set about stacking papers neatly on the scratched and dented second hand coffee table.

With the place in less disarray, Sam finally dragged his messenger bag over to the couch and sat down, pulling out the notebook and envelope and fountain pen once more. Another quick test of the pen to make sure the ink was flowing, and he turned back to the letter, scratching out the start of his abandoned sentence and beginning a new paragraph..

~~_I don't know_ ~~

_Sorry, my roommate and his boyfriend kind of interrupted and I lost my train of thought there. The interruption helped a bit, though. I managed to actually talk about what happened that night to someone other than my therapist, which helped. It helped my roommate, too, because he and his boyfriend are taking our dorm room while I stay in their apartment for the night rather than try and get my roommate all moved back in tonight. Monday morning's class is statistics, which is one of my Gen Ed requirements, so it won't matter if I sleepwalk through it._

_Worst case scenario, though. It'll be fine._

Well, that covered the easy part. Now for the harder part, the part he'd decided he needed to tell Jimmy on his way over. Sam stared at the letter, hesitating, then slowly put the pen back to paper.

_My roommate asked me a question that I struggled to answer, but once I did I realized that I should tell you the answer, too. He asked why I don't just call you, or even text you, now that I know you're alive. Part of it is the fear I mentioned earlier, that I'll call and just get that same "mailbox full" message or even "number not in service" the way you must have gotten when you tried to call me back after my number had changed, but part of it is... I guess it's kind of selfish. You remember how flustered and tongue-tied I would get sometimes when I tried to talk to you about some things, how we put it off because we both thought we'd have more time for those kinds of talks. We ended up not having that time, and this, writing letters, feels like a way to actually break past my verbal block and spit out some of the things I wanted to tell you or should have told you about me, my family, and why we moved around so much. Why we left as suddenly as we arrived._

_Why I was so scared that night._

_But that's a topic for another letter. I need to try and get to sleep because, even if I_ _can_ _sleepwalk through my statistics class, I probably_ _shouldn't._

Once again, Sam paused, torn. He knew how he wanted to end the letter, could even guess that it would be welcome after having talked with Daniel and reread Jimmy's own letter, but still he hesitated. Too much? Too soon? Not soon enough?

....Too late?

_I love you, Jimmy. Always._

_Sincerely yours,_ _  
_ _Sam_

Another hesitation, and then a ten digit number followed the signature. The pen was recapped and stowed in his school bag for safe keeping, and the notebook followed once the pages had been torn out and set aside to dry. While he waited, Sam brushed his teeth in the tiny closet of a bathroom and set an alarm on his phone to wake him up in time to leave for class the next morning. Tucking the now-dry pages carefully into their readied envelope and making a mental note to stop by the campus post office with the weekend's letters and get more stamps, Sam folded himself up on the broken-springed couch, Jimmy's ring tucked securely inside his curled fingers.

That night, he dreamed, not of fire and screams, but of clear blue eyes and soft rain.

**Author's Note:**

> The concept of Sam writing a series of novels about two boys raised to hunt the supernatural was likely first formed in the Collaborative Discord Mindpool with my mutual enablers, so don't be surprised if you see something like it pop up again somewhere!


End file.
